Introduction

Welcome! If you’re new to IPFS, you’ve come to the right place. This guide is intended to give you a thorough but quick overview of what IPFS is, how it works, and how to use it.
IPFS is a distributed system for storing and accessing files, websites, applications, and data. What does that mean, exactly? Let’s say you’re doing some research on Aardvarks. (Just roll with it; Aardvarks are cool!

There are a variety of ways to install a copy of IPFS on your system. We generally recommend installing a prebuilt package, but here are a few other supported options:
Installing from a Prebuilt Package (recommended) Installing with ipfs-update Building from source Upgrading IPFS Troubleshooting Note these instructions all make use of the command line. We use $ to indicate the command prompt — commands to type are on lines that are prefixed with that, while output lines are un-prefixed.

If you haven’t done so, install IPFS.
During this tutorial, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in https://discuss.ipfs.io/ or in #ipfs on chat.freenode.net.
Initialize the repository ipfs stores all its settings and internal data in a directory called the repository. Before using IPFS for the first time, you’ll need to initialize the repository with the ipfs init command:
> ipfs init initializing ipfs node at /Users/jbenet/.